Cocooning Is the Wrong Solution for Conservatives

Should conservatives and persons of faith simply withdraw from the public square, live our lives, and quietly await the inevitable collapse of what the indispensible Walter Russell Mead calls Blue State America?
Some people seem to think so. The question was first raised in 1996 in the journal First Things by the late Fr. John Neuhaus. In an essay called "The End of Democracy," Neuhaus talked about the possibility of civil disobedience by persons of faith as a response to unjust laws and court rulings. He was speaking of the Clinton Administration.
As Mark Judge wrote last year in RealClearReligion, however, in light of the Obama administration's open attack on freedom of conscience in the areas of same-sex marriage, contraception, abortion, and euthanasia, Fr. Neuhaus's 1996 musings seem positively "prescient." "If anything," Judge said, "the editors of First Things undersold the degree to which our government and judiciary subverted our democracy."
In the...(Read Full Article)